A Day of Protest at El Modena

More than a third of El Modena High School students stayed away from classes Monday as protest groups staged competing rallies outside the school where controversy over a club for gay and straight students has raged for months.

Three groups of sign-waving protesters gathered outside by midmorning: nearly a dozen anti-gay demonstrators from a Kansas church, about 20 supporters of the club and a third group protesting the views of both.

Almost a dozen Orange police officers and a handful of school administrators watched the sidewalk demonstration outside the campus’ locked gates. Despite some oral sniping among protesters, the event was peaceful. Police reported no violence or arrests.

That was comforting to Carmen Nieves, whose son was one of 700 El Modena students to stay home Monday--more than twice the school’s usual number of absentees. The freshman had heard rumors of a bomb threat at the 1,935-student school--rumors that police and school officials say had no substance.

“He hates to miss school. He hasn’t missed a day yet,” Nieves said of her son. “But he was really scared.”

At the center of it all is the Gay-Straight Alliance, a school club that has sparked months of debate in the city and on campus. In December, the Orange school board unanimously voted to bar the club from school grounds, but the group has been meeting under terms of a federal judge’s order while a lawsuit filed by club founders wends its way through the courts.

Monday’s gathering was prompted in large part by the appearance of followers of the Rev. Fred Phelps, a Topeka, Kans., minister who contends that God hates homosexuals.

Phelps, who gained notoriety for picketing the funerals of AIDS patients and of Wyoming hate-crime victim Matthew Shepard, did not attend the protest. However, 10 of his relatives and parishioners, including an 11-year-old boy, gathered outside the school carrying signs. They were joined by at least one Orange resident.

One protester wore a T-shirt that said “gay” was an acronym for “Got AIDS Yet?” The demonstrators from Westboro Baptist Church also stood vigil Monday outside Laguna Beach City Hall to protest a city policy requiring police to document reports of hate speech.

Deborah Hockenbarger said her church sends groups of demonstrators, who pay their own travel expenses, all over the country. She realized that her message may have fallen on deaf ears at El Modena because students were in class during the demonstration.

“It’s not my job to change these people’s minds,” Hockenbarger said. “My job is to preach the word and go home. . . . They can go back to doing their sins. Whatever they want to do is their problem.”

Also appearing were local supporters of the Gay-Straight Alliance. That group included Orange County residents, college students and silent, black-clad, masked demonstrators with signs calling homophobia “a social disease.” Similarly garbed protesters scuffled with school administrators at a recent board meeting--an incident that left one school principal with a bite on the arm.

Huntington Beach resident Mira Ingram said she wanted to show her support for the club, a group she wishes had been available when she grew up in Fullerton. “I’m here to show that there are tolerant people in Orange County,” she said.

A third group, which comprised Orange parents and others protesting the other two factions, also appeared Monday morning.

“We’re here to protest the protesters,” said El Modena parent Sherry Lewis, who opposes the Gay-Straight Alliance as an inappropriate influence on minors but also objects to the Kansas group’s tactics. “We don’t think God hates anybody.’